Search on..

Google is very much in the news these days. [come on you dont need a link for google]. first with the ever rising share prices, then with the stand off against the US Govt, and the consecutive fall in prices and now with the censorship of search results in China.

The reason for writing is to mull over Google's inherent 'do good' or 'do no evil' policy. Very few companies ever have such a policy, and while laudable, its the implementation of the same that needs to be seen. Also the fact that you cannot really follow suit and keep financial gain in some cases. Google definitely tried its best .. it fought and still continues to fight a cold war of sorts against censorship in certain countries on their search results .. saying all data should be open to public. There have certainly been incidences where after consultation with respective governments Google has had to exclude some specified sites from search results. But all the while they were advocating open searches. And now comes this stand off with the US Govt. The govt asked Yahoo!, AOL and Google to submit a list of search terms used by their users last year .. in an effort to determine if, and if yes, then how children may be stumbling across porn on the internet. However Google was the lone company which refused to oblige.

Later on in the month, they decided to oblige with the Chinese govt and agreed to censor certain websites when searched from china .. like specific search terms and topics.

Agreed, that the US govt issue does raise questions regarding privacy and all that (continue to guard some privacy which you think still exists, that is) but arent the two decisions by google self conflicting at some level?

Sad finish

The women's finals of the 2006 Australian Open have just concluded and my favourite from the start Justine Henin Hardenne retired half way through the match against Amelie Mauresmo citing an upset stomach. Now Justine has been my favourite from a couple of years, but today was a .. well .. its hard for me to say disappointment .. but sadly, it was. Mauresmo was mowing through Henin-Hardenne, having won the first set 6-1 and looked well set to capture the second one too. The match was all but decided when Justine stopped play due to being unwell.

Two things bother me here .. aside from the fact that Justine didnt look like she had any problem earlier in the game (but what do we see). One is that if it was just an upset stomach, then she could have pulled through the rest of the match and given her opponent a fair and well deserved win. Second is that in her speech during the ceremony, she apologised to the fans but not to Mauresmo .. I feel sorry for her .. she was winning convincingly and fairly. To have won your first Grand Slam in this fashion would be like an irritating fly in her chardonnay for sure.

Garbage truck knocks down highway sign

In a bizzare accident, a garbage truck knocked down an 18 ton traffic sign on Interstate 805N today morning in San Diego. Traffic was backed up for more than 5 miles as emergency workers and crews tried to get it off the freeway. [ photo ]. You can see the garbage container lying on the road at the right of the picture.

Apparently, a malfunction set off the hydraulic jack of the garbage truck which raised the container it was carrying to a height of 29 feet. The sign was approximately 20 feet off the ground. The sign fell on a car and the driver escaped with a broken wrist.

Coincidentally, if I remember right, this week - an year back I and a few friends were returning into Chicago around midnight from Michigan. A huge semi trailer had toppled on I-80, blocking all 4 lanes heading west. But we were friends heading out back home .. barely noticed the hours go by. It would suck to be trapped like this alone for hours .. waiting for the mess to get cleared up.

Why I love The Simpsons

[Homer, Bart and Lisa are in the car, Homer is driving]

Bart: But I can't play quarterback! I don't even know how!

Homer: Son, you can do anything you want. I have total faith in you.

Bart: Since when?

Homer: Since your mother yelled at me. Now, how about that hug.
[Homer completely dismisses his driving and hugs Bart.]

Bart: Dad!! The car!

Lisa: I got it.

Its like comparing Apples and Intels

After years of making fun of Intel and shunning their chipsets agressively, Apple unveiled a mac which uses Intel chipsets and processors. The switch from IBM chips to Intel was announced last year and I still wonder what led to that decision. As Apple still points out on their website http://www.apple.com/powermac/performance/ the IBM benchmarked twice as fast as the Intel xeon. So ditching a tested and appreciated chip to use two chips that give only half the performance of the previous provides what distint advantage is beyond me. In fact the hardware complexity is needlessly increased and you are throwing away a good, performing and appreciated platoform and ruining your relationship with a long standing partner.
Well, perhaps theres more business logic going on backstage than I can understand at this step.

Aircraft Manufacturers flying high

Boeing and Airbus both have landed quite a large amount of orders this year for respective aircrafts. Boeing, in fact broke its own 15+ year record and sold more planes than ever -- almost 4 times as much as last year! So, if such big planes are being sold, somebody must be buying them. With US airlines moving under bankruptcy protection faster than flights taking off on a snowy Chicago morning .. its the foreign airlines which are holding up Boeing and Airbus. AirIndia was a major customer for Boeing in 2005 .. with total orders amounting to 68 aircraft. [Boeing figures]
Its quite clear that while the American airline industry is in the doldrums, the rest of the world is doing quite well in that respect. Some European airlines had a scare or two in the recent past, but most of them are doing rather well. In India too .. all airlines are doing exceedingly well. This just illustrates the point that I have been trying to make all along. That the US Airline problems are not just due to low passenger demand and high fuel prices. All the flights I see nowadays are full, and fuel prices are high for all the airlines all over the world. Bad Management coupled with a lack of foresight and the ability to fall back on bankruptcy protection, I suspect, had more to do with it.